Trinity Explained
One God, three Persons. Not three gods, not one God wearing three masks. The Copts and the Greeks confess this identically, in the same words, without a comma of difference.
Start with what Christ said
The doctrine of the Trinity was not invented by councils. It was forced on the Church by the words of Christ, which cannot be made to fit anything smaller.
- He commanded baptism into one name held by three: "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Matthew 28:19. One name. Three.
- He said: "I and My Father are one." John 10:30. His hearers picked up stones, because they understood exactly what He claimed. John 10:33.
- He said: "He that has seen Me has seen the Father." John 14:9.
- He said: "Before Abraham was, I am." John 8:58, taking to Himself the name God gave Moses at the bush, Exodus 3:14.
- He promised another Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father. John 14:16-17; John 15:26.
- At His baptism all three are present at once: the Son in the water, the Spirit descending, the Father speaking. Matthew 3:16-17.
And Thomas, putting his hand into the wounds, said: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28), and Christ did not correct him.
What the first Church said
The Church did not wait for a council to worship this way. It baptized in the threefold name from the beginning, the Didache, written perhaps within living memory of the Apostles, gives the same formula (Didache 7).
When Arius taught in the fourth century that the Son was the highest of creatures but not truly God, the whole Church met at Nicaea in 325 and answered: begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father. St Athanasius of Alexandria spent his life defending that word, exiled five times for it. He is a saint in both our Churches.
When others denied the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, the Church met again at Constantinople in 381 and confessed the Spirit as Lord and Giver of life, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified together. St Basil the Great had written On the Holy Spirit to prepare the ground. He too is a saint in both our Churches.
Both councils are received in full by the Copts and by the Greeks. Neither family has ever disputed one word of it with the other.
How to hold it without breaking it
The Fathers were careful about images, because every image of the Trinity fails somewhere. Three warnings they give:
- Do not make three gods. There is one God, one divine essence, entirely and equally possessed by Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- Do not make one God in three costumes. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit. They are really distinct Persons, eternally.
- Do not rank them. The Son is not less than the Father, nor the Spirit less than the Son. Begotten and proceeding describe eternal relation, not inferiority.
St Gregory the Theologian put it best: he could not think of the One without being immediately surrounded by the splendour of the Three, and could not distinguish the Three without being carried back to the One.
And this is why the division is absurd
On the deepest mystery of the faith, the very nature of God, the Coptic Church and the Greek Church have no disagreement whatsoever. None. Not a word of the Creed, not a syllable.
Two Churches agree about God Himself, and are divided over how to describe the union of two things in Christ. Read that sentence again slowly. That is where we actually are.